Wednesday, 30 April 2014

After we developed out latest app PerfectBrewfor Android (helps you making teas!)
We realized it takes ages to load (well... 10 seconds!) but we want it faster. We had one unique texture atlas with PNG (2048x2048), fully crowded with everything....

In order to be able to expand our app later on we have decided to split it in 3 atlases (same contents for now)

1 PNG (1024x2048)

1 PNG (1024x1024)

1 ATF (1024x2048)

We wanted to make sure we use ATF as much as possible without breaking the graphics (as it doesnt support preMultiplied Atlas!)

We couldn't speed up the load unless we had some textures loaded AFTER the app started. But this was just an experiment where we forced the program to load everything at start.

We used ATFs in Beekyr (a ton of textures there!) and it was a lot more noticeable as there are a lot of ATFs in the game.

UPDATE:
I tried adding the -r argument and it makes a difference:
It generates very light ATF files that get loaded really fast when we execute the apps. But the images can look very blocky... To avoid this blockyness you need to remove the -q parameter:

png2atf.exe -c e -e -r -4

One thing that doesnt make a difference is when we pack the app into APK it doesnt make much of a difference in file space as APK is a compressed format.